It’s no secret that housing in Squamish is an issue.
Whether you’re trying to buy a house, secure a rental, or even just a room in a sharehouse, the market out there is tough.
Even at the recent all-candidates debate on Oct. 2, all three candidates running for the position of West Vancouver-Sea to Sky MLA managed to agree on the fact that housing here needs to be better.
So what do we do about it?
This week, the District of Squamish agreed to spend $2.3-million on a five-year partnership with Housing Squamish to help build more affordable homes. Around 400 homes to be exact, all to be built by 2029.
According to Housing Squamish executive director Sarah Ellis, they recently received more than 200 applications for eight below-market homes in the Highline community including from couples, single-parent families, singles and seniors.
“We hear daily from community members who are living in insecure, unaffordable, or inadequate housing and in deep need, and are deeply aware of the transformative power of secure housing for residents and our community as a whole,” she wrote in a report to council.
So is building 400 affordable homes over the next five years the solution to the housing issue?
The prospective West Vancouver-Sea to Sky MLA candidates seem to think so. In fact, as BC Conservative party member Yuri Fulmer put it during the debate, the answer is simple: “we need to build more homes.”
BC Greens member Jeremy Valeriote said he believes housing is a “basic human right” so he’s backing his party’s commitment to spend $1.5 billion to build 26,000 units of non-market housing across the province.
And while BC NDP member Jen Ford also echoed the same sentiments, she thinks giving homeowners the option to add gentle density on their single-family property could be a solution too.
“They can add a suite, they can add a laneway house, and they can keep it affordable, or they can sell it, or they can rent it. That is a benefit to homeowners,” she said at the debate.
But what about the people trying to stay afloat in the housing crisis now?
Building affordable homes one, two or five years in the future doesn’t bring any solace to the people who are already struggling to pay their rent.
If you move to Squamish and want to rent a room, according to local Squamish Facebook housing groups the average going price is $1500 to $2000 a month, per person. Even more if you’re a couple, and more again if you have a pet.
And to buy a single-family house, you’re looking at an average of $1,570,000.
So while building affordable homes is great in theory, perhaps there is an avenue worth exploring for the people currently trying to survive it.
